Yesterday I went into Soho to drop off some artwork prints to my agent, who's doing up her new office in Vern & Lettuce theme, hooray! Then I met up for a drink with DFC colleague Andrew Wildman (the guy who does Transformers; you haven't seen his work yet in the DFC, but it's coming soon) and a bunch of other comics folk, including Andie Tong (who draws the UK Spiderman), David Lloyd and Natalie Sandells. (Yay, another female comics person!) It was great to see them, but the pub was noisy - David Lloyd and I were shouting at each other across the table which made for a very shallow conversation - and the drinks overpriced, so I didn't stay all that long and went home and did some more work.

The annoying pub was a sharp contrast to the lush morning tea and cakes I just had with David O'Connell (tozocomic) in East Dulwich. Here's our picture to commemorate the discovery of this great French Moroccan tea room, Le Chandelier, on Lordship Lane. (Thanks, Alex Buxton, for the recommendation!)

David Lloyd: Funnily enough, he was one of the first comics people I ever met, when I stopped by the Dark Horse stand at the London Book Fair a couple years ago. He was just sitting there by himself and I wandered in, and then showed him the first and only commissioned comic I had ever drawn, and he was very nice about it and put me on his mailing list.

I wish I'd been able to have a better talk with him, but I just couldn't manage the noisy pub setting that evening and more than a couple minutes of yelling felt so undignified. :-(

Getting a good cuppa out and about though, is a rare thing. You can only really rely on old fashioned tea rooms and occasionally builders caffs. More often than not you end up with plain old dirty dish water. I blame the influx of starbucks.

I don't know about tea going downhill. I think I've been lucky, I've had some remarkably good cups of tea lately. The best one, I think, was at Eltham Palace tea room. Amazing tea, amazing cake, and even waitresses in white pinafores and caps! The place Dave and I used to meet up, Tea Pod, on Shad Thames was good, and I've had good tea at this Le Chandelier place in East Dulwich, Royal Teas in Greenwich, the tea shop in Fortnum & Mason on Piccadilly, the cafe in the Wallace Collection, and Postcard Teas near Oxford Street. ...Oh, and an amazingly beautiful opening-flower tea at Harrod's, but it didn't taste so good.